Let's Off-Road - Part 1.

The Truth Is Discovered is allowing itself to veer off its original agenda somewhat for a week, as it focuses on a short tour by one of our favourite bands, Martin Stephenson And The Daintees.

For a deeper understanding of our obsession  errm I mean love in this regard please check this out. 

And please humour us as we also take some time out to discuss in parallel, in a rather forced pretence that it is some sort of a contest between Daintees and Tigers, the recent fortunes of TTID's other love - Hull City. I think it is fair to say that the week will feature some "mixed" results.

So...we headed off up to the North East - specifically Gateshead as The Daintees readied themselves to play the 2nd gig of the tour (after a reported stormer at King Tut's Wah Wah Hut in Glasgow the previous night) at the very nicely appointed Sage.

After an afternoon spent nervously mooching around the Metro Centre with furtive glances to phone to check the Tigers' starting line-up away at Millwall, and progress throughout the 90 mins (more of which later); pre-gig drinks and meet ups with old friends were the order of the evening. A final glance at the merchandise stall and we were in our seats to listen to support act Helen McCookerybook (yes, she of The Chefs and Helen And The Horns fame).

Helen played a lovely 30 minute set of songs from her solo albums and a new one, Mr & Mrs Songsmith, from her recent collaboration with Martin, Cafe Of Tiny Kindnesses.

And then Martin and The Daintees hit the stage, in a riot of denim, cowboy shirts and Geordie jocularity, diving straight into a luscious version of Crocodile Cryer. You see the tour is in theory meant to involve them playing classic 1986 debut album Boat To Bolivia in its entirety for the first half, and then songs from later albums including the latest California Star etc. However TTID has a theory that it is impossible for Martin to play the same set twice, no matter what, as his need to go with his creative flow always overrides such petty pre-planned directives. TTID was right.

But, before we get into the gig in detail let's take a step back and look at this 2012 Daintees line-up. Firstly, John Steel on guitar, pedal steel and harmonica, and in many ways the star of the Boat To Bolivia album back in the day. John left The Daintees in 1986 and "went missing" for around two decades before re-connecting with Martin again after some amazing chance encounters. John is a great musician and is the driving force behind California Star. And he wore the best shirt ever. On drums, is John's partner Kate Stephenson (no relation, err to Martin). And on bass Lou Short, a collaborator with Martin since the late 90's. As anyone knows, the greatness of a Daintees line-up can be measured by how much they smile at each other during the gig. Daintees 2012 are like Cheshire cats.

So on they went as Coleen followed Crocodile Cryer, with Martin on top story telling form. A quite ridiculously storming Little Red Bottle led into the first off-stage action of the evening as the band followed Martin through an audience walkabout to the picking of Tribute To The Late Rev. Gary Davis, which was reprised on the instructions of a young boy in the audience who shouted "again!". Indie-pop classic A Piece Of The Cake was next, then Candle In The Middle with John on a pedal steel specially brought in for this song, through Slow Lovin', Caroline, Rain (played solo with every light in the room switched off) and the title track; the latter featuring a rap exulting the brilliance of fellow Kitchenware band Hurrah!

There was no break as Martin led the band away from the planned list (no Running Water or Look Down) and into Me & Mathew, Nancy, Slaughterman, Wholly Humble Heart, the very early instrumental Tremelo Men, a solo Charlie Poole song Hungry Hash House and Cab Attack (for Andy Semple). The audience loved every bit of it, the stories were being told in an increasingly strong North East accent (that's what being on home turf does to you I guess), and we finished up with Martin's old friend Shippy on stage playing along to Salutation Road and then he and Helen joining in with...another audience walkabout that eventually saw them disappear out of the venue and...despite several minutes worth of loud applause and calls for more...the house lights came up and the gig was, rather suddenly, over. One can only assume the venue jobsworths either weren't keen on this off stage malarkey and/or time was, pretty much, up.

In conclusion, a fantastic, joyous gig, to a sell out audience, many of whom seemed not to have caught up with Martin for many years. One of the benefits of this tour being a high profile promotion, for once.

The band and crew moved on to Leeds (last night) and then it's Liverpool on Tuesday. TTID will be catching up with them again at the Salford Lowry on Wednesday. We expect some of Boat To Bolivia will feature, but who knows in what order and what else? We wouldn't want it any other way.

Oh and Hull City? Got beat 0-2, in an insipid performance at the New Den. They are at home to Middlebrough later today, bidding to stop an end of season decline that has seen them lose the last five games on the trot.

As we type, Daintees 1, Tigers 0.

Week 14/15

Ok so the latest 5 albums will take a couple of weeks to be inwardly digested. Mainly because I can't see me getting much time to to do the writing. Not much work, much travelling, much Hull City watching, and lots of gig attendance will mean plenty of listening opportunities, but getting the chance to turn it all into some allegedly sensible wordage will take longer than usual...

Martin Stephenson & The Daintees/California Star (last12mths)
Kevin Coyne/Millionaires And Teddy Bears
The Portico Quartet/The Portico Quartet (new2me)
King Creosote & John Hopkins/Diamond Mine (last12mths)
Happy Mondays/...their 12" singles...

The latest album from an all time favourite; a 1978 album from an underappreciated legend; a new weirdy jazz thing; one of the "best of 2011" listers; and a bit of a diversion as I dig into the Mondays' singles. Lotsa fun to be had.

Back in a fortnight...

Wire/Red Barked Tree

Ah Wire. I remember being utterly confused by their first album Pink Flag when I bought it in 1977. It had 21 very short songs on it, none of which really followed any song structure that I had, up to then, been familiar with. But for some reason, probably a combination of a lack of anything else to listen to, and not wanting to admit to wasting the £2.99 of hard scrounged money it cost me, I persevered. Until it made its own weird (wired) logic. And when it clicked, when my boundaries of what I could understand musically had been suitably stretched, I found I loved it to bits. The two albums that followed it, Chairs Missing and 154, were even weirder and even better. Incredible times, musically.

Red Barked Tree sees Wire back together as a trio, minus Bruce Gilbert. They have been busy over the years as Wire, Dome, solo and various other combinations of the original four members. I have picked up bits and pieces but still have plenty to hunt down in that particularly varied back catalogue.

This new album (well new as it was released in January last year), seemed like a must-have though, being the first proper Wire studio album for a few years. And it does not disappoint. I have no idea how the minds of creative types work when they have been making music on and off for 35 years or more. Do they still have the same urge to create new stuff or do they "time-travel" back in their heads to re-imagine themselves as 20-somethings to recreate that burning desire to communicate?

Listening to opening track Please Take, it certainly feels like it is the former. They sound like they really mean this stuff - "So please take your knife out of my back", "fuck off out of my face, you take up too much space".

And they still sound like Wire. That ethereal sound floating behind the guitars, bass and drums, just like it did on Outdoor Miner and French Film Blurred etc, is still there and plays its part in framing Colin Newman's vocals perfectly. Yes they are still working within the framework of what we know and love as being Wire, there is no great widening of boundaries here (they have previously used their other identities for that), but what there is as good as anything I have heard in the last couple of years by anyone.

Album of the week. By quite some distance.

Tindersticks/The Something Rain

Crikey this is good. I never really noticed Tindersticks back in the day, despite lots of people whose musical tendencies I tend to align with, liking them very much. So I came to this with zero preconceptions really, as I could barely remember what they used to sound like.

The first track, Chocolate, is very different to the rest of the album, being a 9 minute spoken story ala The Gift. I won't spoil the ending for you. It is very well done though both in terms of the build up and the "reveal"!

The rest of The Something Rain is best described as indie-soul I think. Hmmm no that sounds a bit crap. Singer Stuart Staples does have a very deep soulful voice though and when you add in some of the female backing vocals on a track such as This Fire Of Autumn, hopefully you can see what I mean. Whatever the hell it is I like it very much and if it weren't for the subject of the next post in this blog it would, on most other weeks, be album of the week I reckon.

Cute dog on band's website

The Gil Evans Orchestra/Out Of The Cool

Another delve into the world of post-bebop jazz. To cut to the chase, this album features a track called Stratusfunk. Need I say more? End of review? Add that to the fact that it is on the legendary Impulse! label and I really don't need to say a lot else.

In some ways it reminds me a bit of Miles Davis' Sketches Of Spain (minus the Spanish influence) and his Porgy and Bess, which shouldn't have been a surprise as a quick glance at the sleeves of those two confirms that Gil Evans was responsible for production and orchestration.

This is quite a heavily "orchestrated" example of early 60's Impulse! jazz, but it never sounds over-arranged. It veers between the classic "group" structure of jazz sessions of the time where the basic melody of the tune is played straight for 16 bars or so before the soloists kick in and take us to some other place, before returning at the end to the theme; and the orchestral type stuff of Sketches etc where things get a little heavier and more complex.

The skill is in the way Evans arranges all of this. The fact he has such top notch "raw material" to work with in the shape of such as Jimmy Knepper, Elvin Jones and Ron Carter must have helped enormously, but not only does he end up delivering an album of post-Ellington orchestral brilliance, but he actually takes things further, looking ahead to some of the blissed out grooves of the late 60's Davis' classic work. Jazz excellence, baby.

Out Of The Cool

Bap Kennedy/The Sailor's Revenge

Back in 2000 Bap Kennedy released an album called Lonely Street, which has gradually become one of my favourite albums of recent times. All the songs were either about, or very much influenced by, Elvis Presley and Hank Williams. Bap demonstrated an ability to write about such incredibly famous artists from a unique angle, and in doing so bringing new and different perspectives to their lives e.g. on the song Gladys and Vernon, he writes from the point of view of Elvis' mother as she wonders what will become of her poor little boy, the twin baby that lived.

One of Lonely Street's songs, Moonlight Kiss, brought Bap some of the reward and recognition he so clearly deserved when it was used on the soundtrack of the film Serendipity.

His latest album The Sailor's Revenge sees Bap taking another bunch of excellent songs into the studio, this time with Mark Knopfler as producer. The obvious respect his peers have for his talents isn't a new thing, with luminaries such as Herbie Flowers, Shane MacGowan and Van Morrison no less, having worked on previous albums.

This is a really easy album to listen to, as Bap and Knopfler combine to produce a laidback, nostalgia-tinged set of Irish folk tunes. Just occasionally I wanted them to kick out and up the tempo a little. And some of Bap's ability to intrigue in his lyrical approach isn't quite what it was on Lonely Street. Perhaps he needs that inspiration of a unique theme or angle to inspire? I don't know and I am probably doing him a mighty injustice in comparing this to the earlier album as there is nothing fundamentally less than excellent about The Sailor's Revenge - it just doesn't grab me in quite the same way. I guess albums like Lonely Street only come along so often. That's the bloody point after all!

Bill Nelson/Model Village

I have enjoyed Bill Nelson's music ever since I saw Be-Bop Deluxe on a late night ITV concert programme in the 70's. They were a rock band but with unique twists, as well as having some great pop melodies e.g. Ships In The Night. His "new wave" band Red Noise were good but something about that sudden change to fit in with the post-punk sound made me suspicious. Quite why I was suspicious I am not sure, as many other musicians similarly reinvented themselves around that time - Elvis Costello, Nick Lowe, Joe Strummer, The Stranglers for starters.

Post Red Noise I lost touch with him for a bit until I started picking up some of his solo albums in second hand and charity shops, mostly many years after they had been released. There seemed to be a lot of them. And they were never less than interesting.

Bill's current methods of working and interaction with the music industry are far better understood and documented via his excellent diary on his web site William's Study (Diary Of A Hyperdreamer), than anything I could possibly cut and paste together.

Anyway I decided I was long overdue a dip into Mr Nelson's music and the chance of grabbing his recent album Model Village seemed like a great idea. And indeed it was. It is completely instrumental and sounds like the soundtrack to a wonderful sunny Sunday morning (least it did earlier today). What I assume are predominantly synthetic sounds are embellished with acoustic pianos, plus woodwind instruments and birdsong combining together to make a most delightful noise.

I recommend you listen to Model Village whilst in a shockingly bad mood, overtired and niggly at the world in general. This, plus a cup of coffee, will sort you out.